


Happy Birthday Lex

by AlexisLuthor



Category: Smallville
Genre: Birthday, Other, Pie, Realization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-04
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2020-01-04 13:54:19
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18345011
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlexisLuthor/pseuds/AlexisLuthor
Summary: Lex is in a depressed rut when he gets an uninvited guest...on his birthday of all days.





	Happy Birthday Lex

The city was alive beneath the sherbert orange and strawberry pink sunset. In a final attempt to delay it's death past the horizon, the sun's rays stretched out in a yawn and glittered off the metal and glass skyscrapers. The taillights and headlights rushing around on the streets below looked like blood cells coursing through Metropolis' veins. 

The city was alive, but Lex questioned whether or not he was. 

A sharp breeze harshly swept across his face and neck and fluttered his knee length jet black Armani coat. He'd been leaning on the railing of his penthouse terrace for so long that his face was frozen and his arms had fallen asleep.

His throat burned as if he'd been screaming. Unshed tears pricked behind his storm cloud gray eyes. The emotion was there, running like a current just beneath the surface, threatening to break through the stoic mask and force liquid pain to carve rivers down his pale cheeks. 

A long time ago, Lex had been schooled in the ways of tamping down his emotions. As a child, as a teenager, he would grab a hold of his emotions and strangle them until they suffocated. The good, the bad, all feeling, every feeling, had equated to weakness in his father's eyes. Had equated to weakness in his own eyes. So he choked pain, snuffed out sadness, lit love on fire, watched hope die.

His knuckles were white. Fingers threaded together so tightly that he could feel his heartbeat pulsing through them. Steadying breaths were attempted through chapped lips. Eyelids snapped shut so tightly that tears couldn't get through even if they wanted to. 

At the height of his empire, overlooking his city, Lex seriously considered what it would mean to plummet to the Earth just as Icarus had. To sweep past the eyes-wide-open windows of skyscrapers that would watch him fall. Faster and faster, towards oblivion, the ground rushing up to meet him with enthusiasm. 

He considered his father's demise in this fashion...and what was far more disturbing than the fact that he had murdered Lionel Luthor, was the fact that there wasn't even a glint of surprise, not a hint of shock, as the billionaire fell backwards to his death. Even facing death, he saw Lex for the monster he was, for the monster he created.

Lex's throat tightened. Blood rushed in his ears. Panic rose in his chest and met with the despair already housed there. 

He was the king of a dynasty, sitting in a throne dripping with the blood of his murdered father, of his murdered grandparents. He threw himself head long into dismantling Luthor Corp, into building up Lex Corp. He worked and worked and worked, and when exhaustion and madness welcomed him like old friends, he only pushed them aside and worked more.

Because other than work, other than Lex Corp, what was he? Who did he have? What did he have? If he didn't sleep at the office he'd only come home to this expansive, empty, house. House, not home. Where sprawling wood and marble floors stretched out into opulent rooms. Where a massive silk sheathed, king sized bed sat cold and vacant. Meals for one. No backseats in any of his top of the line cars. Nothing to put on Christmas cards. Forty and childless. 

Even if Lex ran the country, which he soon would...what of it? At the end of the day would his legacy be his hatred of Kal-El and dying alone? 

Alone. Perpetually alone. Except apparently, in this exact moment when he wanted to be alone the most.

Pale eyelashes lifted and a quick glance to his right confirmed that he had company. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you look absolutely ridiculous in that primary colored monstrosity?" 

"No, not yet."

"Well you do." 

"That's unfortunate. I was going for something unassuming."

Lex felt the threat of a pull on his lip that might resemble a smile, but he struck it down.

"Would you like your drink? You left it on that table and I think it would be criminal for you to let a thousand dollar glass of whiskey go to waste," the alien held out the cut crystal tumbler that Luthor had abandoned an hour ago. 

Lex half faced him, unbuckling his hands and feeling the needle prick of blood flowing back into his limbs. It was so powerful that he could barely lift his arm to take the drink. It was full. Luthor's third in an hour. And he downed it in a fashion that was also a criminal waste. The amber liquid rushed over his tongue, tasting like fall and warming his throat like summer. 

"Happy Birthday Lex," the alien smiled. It was a beaming smile, as white hot as the sun, and infuriatingly sincere. 

"Why are you here, alien?" he deadpanned.

"Because it's your birthday, mutant," he shot back.

"It's not like we're friends," Lex continued, "I hardly expected a card."

"Good, because I don't have one."

"Great, well, now that you've wished me a happy birthday, feel free to leave." 

The warmth drained from Kal-El's face and his beaming smile seemed to set with the sun. "I don't want to leave."

"What do you want? And why do you think I'd give a shit about what you want?"

"It's your fortieth birthday and I want to spend it with you."

"I don't celebrate birthdays."

Clark had to stop himself from saying, 'I know, I remember.' 

He knew that Lex didn't remember Smallville, didn't remember their friendship, and that killed him. It meant that Luthor wouldn't remember all the times that Clark had let him down, had lied to him, had failed him. But it also meant that he didn't remember afternoons playing pool and evenings pouring over physics books. He didn't remember carefree rides in candy apple red Ferrari's, Clark stretching his long arm out the window as the Kansas summer whipped past him. It meant that the taste of the Talon's mochachino's didn't live in his memory, and neither did the taste of Clark's kiss of life.

"Maybe you don't, but I do, and I brought you something better than a cake." 

"World domination?" 

"Hardly," Superman said before speeding away. 

It was always jarring to see empty space where a person once stood just moments ago. Lex would never get used to that. 

He half wondered and half dreaded what Superman was talking about and wondered why the alien even cared that it was his birthday...or how he even knew?

Lex made sure the internet had been scrubbed of any mention of his age. He simply stopped being in Forbes 30 under 30 one year, and that was a decade ago. Maybe Superman had guessed from that? 

There wasn't enough time to be curious, because Superman had returned with an apple pie. There were two candles wedged into the crust, a 4 and a 0. Superman had a half cocked smile as he held it out. 

Never was there an ounce of insecurity or uncertainty in the way Superman carried himself, but...it was there now, in his awkward stance, in the tepid smile. It was almost...it was almost as if Lex...knew this. Recognized this. Saw through Superman and witnessed something else that was once familiar. 

It hurt his head. 

It was like staring at one of those double images for too long and instead of seeing one image or the other you can somehow see both. 

"Here, I'll light it," Superman said, the words tumbling past his lips as he stared at the candles and suddenly they were lit. 

Something like emotion threatened to come up Lex's throat like heartburn. He swallowed it down.

"Why are you doing this?" he asked.

The outdoor lights had come on as night swept over the city like a blanket. The glow of the candles illuminated Superman's flawless features and Lex tried to read them carefully as he spoke the words.

"Let me guess, it's a pity thing."

"No," Superman huffed in disbelief.

"You have everything Lex."

"Since when did I go from being 'Luthor' to 'Lex?' And what on earth makes you think that I have everything?" 

The candles were beginning to melt on the pie. Superman stuck it out further, closer to Lex's face and Luthor rolled his eyes as he blew them out.

"Did you make a wish?" 

"I did."

Clark didn't have to ask, he knew what Lex's wish would likely be. The billionaire had been obsessed with recovering his memory ever since the incident with Tess. He'd watched Lex struggle with having lost a large chunk of his twenties, and to make matters worse, the electroshock therapy that Lionel had put him through in Smallville...

"I wished that I wouldn't be alone anymore." 

Clark's eyes snapped up and met with Lex's. He swallowed, hints of sadness and shock washing over his features. He had never expected Lex to...be so open...

Tremendous guilt flooded Kent. He felt directly responsible for failing Lex...failing to save him from Lionel, from Belle Reeve, from himself. He should have just told Lex the truth when he had a chance, in their earliest days in Smallville, before he began weaving lies. But how could he? How could he have risked Lionel finding out back then, or Lex viewing him as subhuman and losing him? The irony was that he lost him anyway. 

The irony didn't end there. 

As beloved as Superman was by the world, no one truly knew him. He was in his own category, untouchable, lonely, just like Lex. Sometimes that loneliness was so deafeningly loud that it threatened to swallow him whole. Clark longed to be known, seen, and understood, but that wasn't possible. 

No human could fathom seeing the destruction that he witnessed. Hearing peoples cries for help and having to choose who to save and who to...ignore. No one could comprehend failing on the scale that Superman had often failed. No being on this planet understood what it meant to belong to Earth, to desperately want to belong, but know that this isn't your real home... 

He'd spent his last birthday in the Smallville Cemetery, talking to his dad. And although the power of perception wasn't one of his gifts, he could see that Lex was struggling, he could sense that Luthor was hurting, perhaps as deeply as he was.

"What if I don't like apple?" Lex asked, breaking Clark's train of thought.

Clark immediately flashed back to a vibrant fall day. His mother wearing an apron, pies cooling on the window sill, Clark and Lex each with a fork, digging into a pie stolen from the line, shoving forkfuls of apple into their mouths. Lex managed to get some milk into a glass before Clark began drinking it straight from the carton. It left a white moustache on his upper lip that Lex had stared at for a moment before continuing the assault on the pie. The two of them finished it like starving men who had never tasted such ambrosial decadence before. 

Lex couldn't get enough of Martha's pies after that and Clark completely understood. The apple, the cinnamon, the perfectly cooked crust, it was like taking a time machine to all that was sacred about fall. It was a mouthful of Smallville. Of swift breezes pushing colorful leaves along the downtown sidewalks. People in scarves and gloves clutching their cinnamon lattes. High schoolers in letterman jackets, hand painted signs, cheerleaders and football games.

"Earth to Superman," Lex again jarred Clark off memory lane.

"How do I know you'll like apple?" Clark reiterated. "Well...what's more American than apple pie? If you're going to be president, you'll have to like apple pie," he grinned. "Come on, I'll cut you a slice." 

A very perplexed Lex followed Superman towards the outdoor table, his empty glass in hand.

With a few zips, Superman had supplied two plates, two glasses of milk, forks, and was cutting the pie. Lex regarded him warily, trying to discern any possible hidden motives. 

"Have a seat, I don't bite," the alien smiled.

"Don't you? You've certainly beaten the crap out of me a time or two."

"Well, someone had to keep you in check," he said under his breath in jest. 

"Just because I'm eating your pie, don't go thinking that this is some sort of truce."

"Oh Lex, I'm not nearly as naive as...as you think I am," he caught himself, stopped his lips from saying, 'as I used to be.'

Clark sat and began eating his slice of apple pie, already planning on eating two more. Maybe it was rude to eat half of his birthday gift to Lex, but...Lex owed him for trying to kill him half a dozen times anyway. 

Lex's features twisted into something like ecstasy as he took the first bite of pie. 

That head jarring familiarity that Lex had felt earlier came rushing back. He knew that this taste had come from his past. This moment...Superman's company...the way it seemed so natural and familiar... it felt as though two words were colliding in Lex's head. He reached for that feeling, chased it like one would chase a dream after just waking up. Similarly to that experience however, the more he reached for it, the hazier it became, the further from his grasp it moved. A foggy floating shadow of another time and another Lex. 

He swallows the first bite and stares over at this uninvited guest, his blue eyes as clear as the wide open sky on a cloudless day. 

Maybe Superman is the key to regaining his past. 

The alien grasped his glass of milk and held it up in a salut. "To the future."

Lex dropped his fork, picked up his glass and clinked it against the alien's. 

"To the future."


End file.
